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Today we are checking out another Radeon HD 4850, this particular version comes from HIS. Their Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo graphics card makes use of an upgraded cooler, along with a little factory overclocking. These improvements help to make the Radeon HD 4850 even better... Since the introduction of the Radeon HD 4850 roughly five months ago, it has remained one of the best, if not the best sub $200 US graphics card available. While the Radeon HD 4850 has been working the $200 US price bracket, its partner the Radeon HD 4870 has been holding off the competition at the $300 US price point. Recently AMD has introduced another Radeon HD 4800 series player, the Radeon HD 4830, which is designed to do battle at the $130 US price point, taking on the GeForce 9800 GT (8800 GT). Furthermore, the Radeon HD 4760, 4750, 4550, and the 4350 have also been added to the mix. The Radeon HD 4350 for example costs just $40 US, and although this may not be a gaming orientated product, it still offers users a number of other useful features.  Still, even with all these new Radeon HD 4000 series graphics cards now out and about, the Radeon HD 4850 remains our favorite current generation product. This is because we feel that this particular graphics card offers the best balance of both performance and value for today’s gamers. For around $200 US the Radeon HD 4850 offers impressive performance in the latest and greatest games, such as Far Cry 2. The only problem we had with the Radeon HD 4850 was the reference cooler, which was grossly underpowered. The single slot cooler would allow the graphics card to operate at over 90 degrees, while idle temperature never dropped below 70 degrees. Recently we checked out a new version from Palit which featured an updated PCB board design along with an upgraded cooler. This new cooler dropped load temperatures from over 90 degrees to just 60 degrees, an impressive improvement. Now we are finally checking out another upgraded Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, this time from a very well known manufacturer called HIS. For as long as we can recall the most infamous HIS products have hailed from the IceQ series, and this latest creation is no exception. The new HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo (H485QT512P) graphics card has been designed to push the Radeon HD 4850 to the limit. HIS has done this by upgrading the cooling, allowing them to overclock the GPU quite considerably, boosting performance. However in order to remain competitive, the pricing has gone relatively unchanged despite the improvements. This means that HIS are charging just $190 US for their overclocked/upgraded Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. Like the recently reviewed Palit Radeon HD 4850 which comes with similar enhancements, users are only getting an upgraded graphics card, the package itself remains fairly standard with no free full version games to speak of. Therefore we are very eager to start testing the HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ 4 Turbo to see what it really has on offer. However, before we do, let’s just take a moment to check the card out in a little more detail… |
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